Assessing the Challenges of Creating Service Value in Supply Chains

One of the major challenges organizations face today is the increasing complexity of service value creating process. In order for the organizations to manage the value they are providing for the customers they need to have a holistic understanding of the processes involved and how those attribute to the total value provided. This study gives light to the relevant factors and their nature in value creation in supply chain context as well as evaluates the inhibiting factors that hinder it. The study is based on both the integrated literature review and empirical case study evidence. A discovery-oriented approach was applied with literature review based expert group discussion as the primary method of data collection. The expert group session was conducted to privately owned companies in different fields of industry and different natures of value creation. The data was verified following the Delphi method in group discussions. This study provides an important, yet sparsely addressed viewpoint to the supply chain management literature by illustrating essential attributes of value creation in supply chain context. The findings of the paper suggest that the value creation in supply chain context requires special attention in terms of the understanding the attributes that both promote and hinder the value creation process. More precisely, the most important factors identified for value provision were related to emotional attributes while most challenging issues in the value creation were related to the internal processes in the organizations. The paper provides new information about value creation in supply chain context in two ways: Firstly, presenting the essentiality of different elements of value provision. Secondly, the study gives light to the hindering factors in service provision in different network levels. The presented viewpoint adds new information to the current scientific understanding of value creation and its challenges and therefore can provide opportunities to deal with value creation in supply chain context. The presented study offers a new viewpoint to be considered in supply chain management. By better understanding the value attributes and their relevance in supply chains, the managers can increase the effectiveness of value creation activities.